Tumblr's Reposting Mechanism
Jace: i still haven't really figured out whether I understand what's going on at tumblr. the reblogging thing might be lost on me
Me: its like tumblr specific commenting, think of it that way.
Jace: is that it? is it too simple?
Me: well no, there's some genius in it. so by default, you can't comment on tumblr blogs, but you effectively can if you have your own tumblog (by reblogging, and adding your 2-cents)
Me: now, for anyone else following the original person they can see your 'comments' (by following who reposted). But again, even that feature is only available to people inside the tumblr community.
Me: the 'bonus' though, is that by following the comments, you can discover new blogs since each commentor MUST have a blog to comment. So it is a discovery mechanism (again, keeping you coraled in tumblr) and a way to ensure comments are by people committed to sharing blog posts, not by random idiots who leave flame droppings.
Jace: yeah, I can appreciate the inclusive, secure aspect of that. not sure I'm riproaring to try and insert myself into a preexisting closedish community though.
Me: I guess because it's a self-contained culture and if you don't consider open-commenting critical to you, your blogs are still effectively public.
Jace: yeah. actually, I don't even need commmenting on my "blog" I'm much less interested in reposting links and such from other blogs, but rather in creating a winding narrative of human presence on the web.
Dec 9th